Average White Band – Cut the Cake

Before this album, I knew 2 AWB songs: “Pick Up the Pieces” (because of its involvement in Swingers) and “Cut the Cake” (because it was on a 2-disc album called 70’s Dance Machine that I got for subscribing to Entertainment Weekly when I was 16). I guess “School Boy Crush” was a single, but I’d never heard it. I knew it best as the source of the main sample from Eric B & Rakim’s “Microphone Fiend”. Now I’m actually disappointed I didn’t already know it. The bottom line: this album is rock-solid. Every song is funky, but it’s not hard funk (like Parliament). You can dance to this record, or you can get stoned and sit around to this record. It can be background music, or the beat of the party. It’s just really versatile. And to think these are a bunch of red-haired Scotsmen, rather than a team of Memphis session players. Boggles the mind.